Gingrich Reconciles Cheating On His Wife While Harping On Family Values: âIt Doesnât

Gingrich Reconciles Cheating On His Wife While Harping On Family Values: âIt Doesnât Matter What I Doâ
In a new Esquire profile, Gingrichâs second wife Marianne â whom he cheated on with his current wife, Callista â breaks her twelve year silence on her relationship with Gingrich to reveal a portrait of man who understood the deep hypocrisy of his actions, but simply didnât care:

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

Heâd just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where heâd given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.

The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, âHow do you give that speech and do what youâre doing?â

âIt doesnât matter what I do,â he answered. âPeople need to hear what I have to say. Thereâs no one else who can say what I can say. It doesnât matter what I live.â

Marianne, who was Gingrichâs âclosest advisorâ during his reign in the 1990s, went on to say that Gingrich âbelieves that what he says in public and how he lives donât have to be connected.â But of course, as Gingrich himself demanded when he led a crusade to impeach President Clinton for personal infidelity, politiciansâ private lives are inevitably connected to their public ones. Nonetheless, Gingrich has himself admitted to continuing his illicit affair with Callista â 23 years his junior â while simultaneously prosecuting Clintonâs adultery.

Perhaps Gingrich has no qualms about committing the sins he rails against because he doesnât really believe in what he preaches. Esquireâs John Richardson notes that despite Gingrichâs apocalyptic rhetoric, when encountering radical conservative activists, Gingrich âover and over againâ¦takes the long view and becomes the very soul of probity.â âI wouldnât be able to describe what his real principles are,â former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards said of the former speaker. âI never felt that he had any sort of a real compass about what he believed except for the pursuit of power.â